NEWS BRIEFS
Grobeson as advisor to Williams on gay and lesbian issues, and a promise from Williams that he won't put up with harassment of gays.
Close to play lesbian colonel
Seattle-Barbra Streisand and Glenn Close are teaming up to produce a TV movie about the decorated Army colonel thrown out of the Washington National Guard after disclosing she is lesbian.
Close will portray Margarethe Cammermeyer in the film scheduled for air in fall 1994, NBC said July 22 in Los Angeles.
"This is a story that throws light on one of the most important issues of our time,” Streisand said in a statement.
Cammermeyer, 51, was a 26-year veteran and chief nursing officer at Camp Murray near Tacoma when she was forced out of the service in 1992, her Bronze Star for heroism in Vietnam notwithstanding. She is now a nurse at a VA hospital in Tacoma and is suing to overturn the military gay ban.
New Orleans gets partners law
New Orleans-Unmarried couples who live together gay or straight-will be able to register as domestic partners under a plan approved by the City Council.
Aside from allowing the couples involved to declare their relationships publicly, however, the action will have little practical effect in New Orleans, at least at first. Provisions giving health coverage to city workers' partners and requiring hospitals to allow visitation were removed from the bill.
Lloyd Bowers, a lawyer who presented the plan, said 28 other U.S. cities or counties officially register domestic partners.
Although the measure has been pushed primarily by gay groups, the experience in some of the cities that have partners registries is that half or more of the couples that register their partnerships are heterosexual.
To register their relationship, a couple must submit a notarized affidavit to the clerk of the City Council stating that the partners live together, "have agreed to be jointly responsible for basic living expenses" and "have chosen to share one another's lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring."
Deputy City Attorney Ron Purcell said the law will give the partners no new legal rights or benefits, such as inheritance rights or claims on property in the event of a breakup.
Gay father can't see his kids
Jacksonville, Fla.-A judge here, in a notably homophobic decision, has severely restricted a gay father's visitation rights.
Calling Scott McAbee's gayness "detrimental to his children," Circuit Judge A.C. Soud on July 22 rejected the man's visitation request.
"His homosexual lifestyle is so indicative of moral unfitness that it disqualifies his ability to live up to and perform the societal duty of parenting children," Soud wrote.
"We're appalled by the judge's decision," said Nina Vinik, legal director at the ACLU's state office. "To say that gays are incompatible with being good parents is just dead wrong."
Alyn Wambeke, spokesman for the Lesbian-Gay Community Association of Jacksonville, said: "To mandate that this man
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can never be open with his children about his life or his partner is particularly tragic."
McAbee and his former wife had been married more than 10 years when he told her in March 1992 that he had fallen in love with a man he met in a Tampa bar. Although the couple agreed the children should live with Mrs. McAbee in South Carolina, McAbee requested unrestricted visitation rights. Soud denied the request, citing the HIV positive status of McAbee's lover and Florida laws forbidding sodomy, gay marriages and adoptions by gays and lesbians.
Instead, the judge allowed McAbee to visit the children in South Carolina under Mrs. McAbee's supervision if he shows up without a male companion, submits to two HIV tests a year and agrees not to discuss his "lifestyle" or partner.
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Funeral picketer wants law nixed Topeka, Kan.-The Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. and his family have attacked two new state laws under which they could be prosecuted for picketing the funerals of people with AIDS and sending homophobic faxes to gays and public officials.
Phelps, a Baptist pastor, disbarred attorney and unsuccessful political candidate, is known for sending vitriolic fax messages that call people names and decry perceived supporters of the "sodomite agenda." His family and church also have picketed funerals of AIDS victims, carrying signs such as "God Hates Fags."
A lawsuit filed July 19 by Phelps, one of his sons and two members of his church in U.S. District Court said both laws violate rights to free speech and freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Kansas legislature enacted both laws in 1992. The first law makes it a misdemeanor to send fax messages with the intent to "abuse, threaten or harass" someone. The second law makes it a misdemeanor to picket at or near a cemetery, church or mortuary before, during and after a funeral.
Wellcome wins AZT patent suit
New Bern, N.C.-U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard ruled July 22 that Burroughs Wellcome was the sole inventor of AZT. The company's exclusive patent on the drug is good for 12 more years.
AIDS activists warned that the judge's ruling means a cheaper, generic version of AZT won't be available until at least 2005.
Burroughs Wellcome, based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., got approval in 1987 from the Food and Drug Administration to sell the drug, and later sued two generic drug makers when they asked government permission to make a version.
Barr Laboratories and Novopharm Ltd. had argued that scientists with the National Institutes of Health should be named coinventors of AZT. Without their work, Burroughs Wellcome wouldn't have known AZT was effective against AIDS, they said.
Because NIH used public money on the research, the companies argued, Burroughs Wellcome cannot have an exclusive patent. Barr, based in Pomona, N.Y., and Novopharm, a Canadian company, said generic AZT could sell for as little as half its current cost of $2,200 a year wholesale.
Their attorneys said they would appeal the ruling.
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